The last month I had been going to the dr for a Nst or ultrasound twice a week. They were watching me like a hawk. 50% of twins are born by 34 weeks and I made it to 36.5. But with that, it is very easy for a twin pregnancy to go bad quickly at the end and for it to be safer for the babies out than in, which is why they watched me so closely. Not to mention I was already struggling with gestational diabetes and cholestasis. Well on my check at 36 weeks(Thursday) my blood pressure had gone up, so he asked me to go into the hospital if my blood pressure was higher than 140/90 for two hours and if it never got/stayed that high then to go in on sunday morning. Here is a picture of me right before that appointment:
Saturday I went for a walk and did everything I could think of to help myself dilate. And went to bed. Sunday morning I showered and blow dried my hair, did my makeup, then went in.
They ran labs and checked BP and did an Ultrasound on the babies and checked me. I was only dilated to a 1. :-( My BP was normal:-( buuuuut the labs, bless them, were abnormal. Also the ultrasound showed decreased fluids.
Dr Smith argued with the nurses and they finally decided to let me be induced. they took me back to my room and we just waited there for a bit. That was around noon. At one my nurse Judy came. She was awesome. they were so busy that they had to call her in. She had crazy hair, but was so nice and sweet and explained everything that was happening. i really liked her. she got my IV in and flowing then left us alone.
We decided to watch Love comes Softy, since it was a Sunday and we wanted to keep the Sabbath day Holy. Next time i have babies i am NOT having them on a sunday, because i would have rathered watch Psych because the laughing keeps me distracted, well, and lets be honest. who wouldn't want to stare at that eye candy all day, right? oh well.
At 2 they decided not to do the medicine that makes your cervix soften because my contractions were coming on their own pretty strong and regular. (go me) they did decide to give me a small amount of pitocin, so Nurse Judy came back at 2:50 to get that started. sooooo we hung out. we talked. we watched the movie. i practiced all that wonderful breathing my mom had been telling me about.
At one point my mom told me to go to my happy place before i was even in the hospital and i started crying as i said, "i don't have one." i was feeling pretty discouraged. i was in tons of pain and i wasn't dilating at all. i had always pictured that when i had children i would have my husband there with me every step of the way but he wasn't there. i was lucky to have my mom there, but it's not the same. i couldn't think of one thing that was happy in my life......until a little later i was in my room grabbing something from my closet and i saw these:
These are their sunday outfits. they are the cutest things ever and i realized that they were my happy thought. they were the reason i wasn't curled up in a ball and hadn't been curled up in a ball for the last 6 months. i had to be strong for them because i loved them so much. so i got those adorable little outfits out and i hung them were i could see them so when i contracted i would remember why i was doing this. (not that i had much of a choice at that point) so back to the hospital, everytime i had a contraction i just looked at their sunday outfits and remembered why i was there and that helped alot.
well around 3:30 i was in ALOT of pain, and struggling really bad. The nurse had said only 30 minutes before to let her know when i wanted my Epidural. (for those of you who are bashing me for getting one, with twins my Doctor wouldn't let me go without. there was too great of a chance of having an emergancy C section if something went wrong during birth that i HAD to be on an epidural at the end.) i also knew that the Dr was going to be coming in to break linc's water soon and check my progress, and to be quite frank, i HATE HATE HATE HATE being checked. and the idea of him BREAKING linc's water sounded even more painful. so i decided, i have to have an epidural anyway, why not get it now so when he comes back to torture me i won't have to feel it. it's not like there is a prize for waiting to get it in my case....
for future reference, the Epidural was AWESOME. we'll get back to that, but i will try my darndest to not have one if i have more children because the back pain it has caused since then is unbelievable.
So i called in delightful nurse Judy. Pay attention because Shortly she becomes my best friend and i will everything i have to her. She brought in the Anesthesiologist in to o the deed. he had it in by 4:30, and i think i was in more pain than i realized. You see, when i am in pain or "grouchy" i don't yell and scream at people, i just completely withdraw into myself. i get very quiet. my answers to questions become very short. and literally within seconds of having the epidural in i started professing my love to the Anesthesiologist and my nurse, and my mom, and the tray next to me, and the color pink, and anything else that i saw. suddenly the world was a very happy, lovely, delightful.........QUICK GET ME A TRASH CAN OR SOMETHING! yup. you guessed it. the Epidural made me nauseous. violently. so they gave me anti-nausea medicine which promptly made me very sleepy.
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5:45 - Dr Smith came and woke me up (rude) to check me. I was still at a 2. :( boooo. then he broke Lincolns Water. (with Fraternal twins they both have their own sac, meaning there are actually two waters to break, but they could only reach lincolncs because he was down the furthest. ) he Broke Linc's water, which felt really funny from my side....with an epidural in....They also attached the monitor inside me that checked the strength of my contractions...... then he left.
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2:00 AM - Dr Smith, who luckily for me was on call the whole time i was there, bless his soul, came to check me AGAIN. and guess what? i was STILLLLLLL at a 2. lame sauce.
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i was awake from about 4-6 and feeling good. it's amazing what an epidural can do. :) so i just played around on Facebook. My mom was asleep on the couch, and i let her sleep...i figured she must not be sleeping well away from her bed, so if she was asleep i wasn't messing with that.
6:00 - AM Dr Smith came in and checked me again and i was (drum roll please) STILL AT A FREAKING 2! I apparently have a cervix of steal because it wasn't budging even the slightest. Other downer.....my contractions had basically stopped. they were pathetic. and not coming very often. and i was on the max of pitocin by that time. WEIRD. eh? so they knocked out my pitocin completely for an hour and then started it again hoping to get my contractions back on track.
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10:00 AM - Checked me again.....nothing. contractions weren't starting again, and i wasn't dilated. Dr Smith said he was off call at 1, but would come back to deliver my twins regardless of if i went naturally or c-section. he said that he didn't want me to go more than 24 hours after having the water break because the chances of infection were high. also with them being preemie, that could be even more dangerous. he said that there was an OR available now, and that i could have a c-section then, or i could wait until 24 hours and see if my contractions would come back, and if i would dilate further. he said he would come back at 11 to check me.
I thought about it. i was pretty miserable at that point. but i think that's because i was starving to death. I knew i wasn't progressing, and with my contractions not happening and not being able to be kicked back into gear the changes of dilating further didn't seem high. poor Dr smith WOULD come back for me, but he had spent the last 2-3 days being on call. yucky. I decided that i would rather just go for it if when he checked me at 11 i was still the same.
11:00 - SAME! ok. lets get some babies here.
11:25 - in the OR. i was SOOOOO nauseous. it was ridiculous. like freaking ridiculous. they had given me everything they could. one of the only things i remember is throwing up several times in there, but i was strapped to this bed thing and so all i could do is turn my head. someone had a bag there and would wipe my face, but then the nurses went to help with the c section, and there were these two guys talking about boats there, and they weren't very attentive, so i ended up missing a bag, and asking several times for someone to wipe my face off before they heard me. i would have complained but i fell asleep instead. NOOOO i can't fall asleep....my babies are coming. you see the extra nausea medicine made me even more sleepy. i was struggling SO HARD to stay awake and not miss anything, but my eyes were closing at nearly every opportunity. everytime they jerked my uterous around trying to get my babies out i threw up.
Finally i heard it. 11:44:30 Lincolns cry. it was the sweetest sound i've ever heard in my life. followed less than a minute (11:45:00) by lexi's cry. it was wonderful. i was so happy. they took them to work on them. i couldn't see lexi. this blasted sheet was in my way, but i could see the basinet they were working on Lincoln in, and then i saw it.....his hand. the smallest most beautiful thing i've ever seen. then then brought him over by me to see. i kissed him and told him i loved him and they took him to the NICU. he was struggling breathing i learned later. Then they brought Lexi to me. My beautiful little girl. i got a good 20-30 seconds looking at her, kissing her and telling her how beautiful she was and how much i loved her before they took her to NICU. i don't think they had a good reason to take her to NICU but they took her anyway.
Then i threw up again as they took my uterous out and turned it upside down....at least that's what they said they were doing, but i couldn't tell. then i went back to the room and started recovery. at that point i could hardly stay awake.
my mom had gone with the twins and was taking pictures, and the plan was for her to text them to me. i begged the nurse for my phone, and i called my mom asking for the pictures. 5 minutes later she came in and said she wasn't allowed to talk on her phone in NICU but she traded me phones so i could look at the pictures she had taken. Here are some of the pictures she took. :):):):):):):)
then before i knew it they brought me lexi. she only needed 1 hr NICU. i got to breastfeed her...or try rather. apparently new moms aren't very good at breastfeeding, and new, preemie babies are even worse, but it was so wonderful. Then before she was even done they brought linc in and i got to feed him. and i just held both of them. and snuggled.
then....it all went blank. i think i slept again...i don't know. i really have no idea what happened the rest of the day.
That next morning, however was my favorite memory from the hospital. my mom had gone home to sleep and the nurse had just brought my babies back in to me from after the night. it was me alone with my babies for the first time ever. i just sat there and looked at them. they were so beautiful. then they started rooting. they were hungry. all by myself, i breastfed both of them, then wrapped them up and they fell asleep again while i held them. that was the most sacred moment of my life, looking at those two angels God trusted me enough to bless me with.
It's interesting the way God works. I had wanted to go Vaginal SOOOOOOOO bad. but i was open to the idea of C section if it was needed. my qualifications to go vaginal were
1)lincoln HAD to be the same size or bigger than lexi
2)lincoln HAD to be face down
3)both babies could not be under distress.
and i seemed to meet all criteria. but yet i found myself on the way to the OR. i felt like such a failure. i felt like i couldn't even bring them into the world the right way. how was i ever going to be a good mom to them. but yet i still felt like having a C SEction was the best thing to do at that time.
i found out afterwards a couple things. Their weight when they were born was Lincoln: 5 pounds 4.4 Ounces. Lexi: 5 Pounds 11.9 Ounces. she was a half a pound bigger than him. I also found out that when the Dr Opened me up Lincoln's head was twisted cockeyed. Had i been able to dilate and try to go natural, i no longer met the criteria, meaning even if lincoln HAD come out vaginally, lexi likely would have had to have a c section anyway. Also, with lexi pushing down so hard on linc, and his head being scewed, he may not have been able to come out anyway. i've heard that sometimes twin B suffer's brain damage if Twin A comes out normal and then B has to have a C section. they loose oxygen and by the time they can get out they have brain damage. Dr Smith assured me that wouldn't be the case because he could have twin B out within 15-30 seconds of any trouble, but still, With their personalities i honestly feel that Lincoln was protecting his sister. In their Baby Blessings his said something about being sent here to protect his mother and his sister. I often wonder if he didn't turn his head sideways in effort to force us into a C section to protect Lexi. maybe i'm crazy, but that's what i choose to believe.
So there you have it. My babies are here, healthy, wealthy and wise.
